Starter Books and Keyboards

The first order of business when starting is to decide which lesson books to use. For those who want to start by learning general technique (not specialties such as jazz or gospel), you can use any of a number of beginner books such as Michael Aaron, Alfred, Bastien, Faber and Faber, Schaum, or Thompson. Of these, many people prefer Faber and Faber. Most of them have beginner books designed for young children or adults. There is an excellent piano site at:

http://www.amsinternational.org/piano_pedagogy.htm

which lists most of these teaching books and reviews many of them. Depending on your age and past musical education, you can skip through these books at your pace and optimize your learning rate.

These starter books will teach you the fundamentals: reading music, various common fingerings such as scales, arpeggios and accompaniments, etc. As soon as you are familiar with most of the fundamentals, you can start learning pieces that you want to play. Here again, teachers are invaluable because they know most of the pieces that you might want to play and can tell you whether they are at the level that you can handle. They can point out the difficult sections and show you how to overcome those difficulties. They can play the lesson pieces to demonstrate what you are trying to achieve; obviously, avoid teachers who cannot or refuse to play for you. After a few months to about a year of such study, you will be ready to continue by following the material of this book. In order to avoid the numerous pitfalls that await you, it is a good idea to read this book, at least quickly once through, before you begin your first lesson.

At the very beginning, perhaps up to a year, it is possible to start learning using keyboards, even the smaller ones with less than the 88 keys of the standard piano. If you plan to play electronic keyboards all your life, it is certainly permissible to practice only on keyboards. However, practically all keyboards have actions that are too light to truly simulate an acoustic piano. As soon as possible, you will want to transition to a 88-key digital piano with weighted keys, see section 17 above.